Maier’s passion began at her artist mother’s insistence. “Growing up, she’d paint me whatever I wanted,” she says. “Then, when my youngest child went to kindergarten, she decided, ‘Enough.’ It was time for me to learn.”

Maier’s mother provided a canvas, paint and a photo of a little red barn with directions to copy it. Turns out, Maier inherited some talent. A friend offered to buy the barn painting, and Maier had “all the encouragement” she needed to sign up for night classes. Maier subsequently earned a fine-arts degree from Paier College of Art in Hamden, Conn., and has won awards at juried shows in New England. She’s traveled to picturesque locales, such as Paris and Provence, to paint. But her favorite “muse” is just around the corner from her home. From thousands of daily runs along the beach, she has a clear mental picture of tides, surf, sand, seagrass, sunrises and sunsets.

“This is my niche,” she says. “I would curl up and die if I wasn’t running and painting the beach.”

In her own wordsOn Her MUSE: “Watching the seagrass wave, the water crash, the clouds move, the sun go up or down, you feel the pulse of the Earth.”